The Footsteps Die Out For Ever (2016) for narrator, drum set, and orchestra

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Abstract

A Tale of Two Cities, serialized in weekly and monthly installments and
finally published as a single volume in November 1859, is one of Charles
Dickens’s best-loved and most-analyzed novels. In The Footsteps Die Out For
Ever, I have sought to pay homage to Dickens’s work, heightening and
extending the drama of the story by writing music for drum set and orchestra
to accompany the narrator, who recites text drawn from the novel.
The Footsteps Die Out For Ever begins with a brief flourish on the tubular
bells, introducing the piece’s scalar material, and the narrator reciting the
opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times....” This text sets the stage for the action and commentary to
follow in the narrative, as well as reminding the listener of his or her own
place in time. Dickens compares the period of the French Revolution to “the
present period,” a conceit which makes the work relevant not only to his
time, but just as much to our own.
The rest of the composition’s text is an edited version of the novel’s final
chapter, titled “The Footsteps Die Out For Ever.” The music uses recurring
motives to represent characters, themes, and ideas, and serves as background
illustrating much of the action, including the tumbrils that carry the
prisoners of the Revolution, the guillotine’s grim work, an intimate
conversation between Sydney Carton and a seamstress, Carton’s recollection
of Christ’s declaration “I am the resurrection and the life...”, Carton’s
execution, and his prophetic last thoughts foreseeing the end of the
Revolution and its evils. In those final words, Carton’s thoughts turn to the
lives for which he is laying down his life, and end with the famous concluding
words of the novel: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”